Many clients who are new to Vertica are also new to big data. While Vertica’s reliance on industry-standard SQL can make the transition very easy, often the introduction of multiple nodes used in support of a database platform can take some getting used to. It is the very existence of multiple nodes that make big data, well, big. It is also these nodes that can make things confusing and complicated, at least until you fully understand them. For decades, data architects could simply create a logical and physical model for their tables, design the primary keys, implement the tables, and everything would work more or less OK. In a multi-node environment, a new wrinkle has been added to this equation – it now becomes important to understand where data resides within the cluster, and how that data relates to other data in the database. Understanding this bigger picture is what makes big data more challenging.